A new Commission Communication on Cloud computing has been adopted and announced by Commissioner, Vice-President Neelie Kroes on 27 September 2012. The DG CONNECT unit E2 has been a major actor leading to this important step within the Commission services. Read further...

The ConPaaS team has made available ConPaaS-1.0.0. This is a major release which features a number of important improvements compared to the 0.9.0 release. Read further...

Brocade is working with Piston Cloud, the enterprise OpenStack company, to help ensure that joint customers can orchestrate and manage Brocade VCS fabric-based network infrastructure using Piston Enterprise OpenStack software. Read further...

Dell has launched a host of new and enhanced industry-leading Cloud client computing solutions that provide organisations with the broadest choice in how to implement, manage, deploy and access virtual computing environments using VMware. Coming on the heels of recent Cloud client computing developments, Dell, a market expert in thin-clients, is expanding support for VMware View and PCoIP protocol on its zero- and thin-clients, Desktop as a Service (DaaS) with PCoIP support and new channel partner solutions to Europe. Read further...

AT&T and IBM have signed a business agreement to deliver a highly secure, first-of-its-kind "network-enabled" Cloud service that uses private networks rather than the public Internet. The companies are combining AT&T virtual private networking and IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ Cloud capabilities with breakthrough technology from AT&T Labs to create a new, fast and highly-secure shared Cloud service. Targeted to Fortune 1000 companies globally, the service will be offered in early 2013 as a powerful new option for clients who are deploying Cloud solutions that demand high levels of security and availability. Many businesses often cite security as a key inhibitor to Cloud computing adoption. Read further...

Altus IT and Torres Network will both deploy new infrastructures built on PureSystems to help grow their businesses. These two clients are the latest in a growing trend that has seen Managed Service Providers (MSP) in key growth markets choosing IBM PureSystems over other vendor's offerings in order to transform their data centres. Read further...

A new Cloud-based operating system for all kinds of computer is being developed by researchers in China. Details of the TransOS system are reported in a forthcoming special issue of theInternational Journal of Cloud Computing. Read further...

VMware Inc., a global expert in virtualization and Cloud infrastructure, has unveiled an updated Cloud management portfolio, including significant enhancements to the management products in the recently released VMware vCloud Suite. VMware is also introducing a new product to the suite, VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, and is updating the VMware IT Business Management Suite to further simplify and automate management while empowering IT to govern services across multiple, heterogeneous Clouds. Read further...

VMware Inc. has launched a new VMware Enterprise Purchasing Programme (EPP). Expanding on the current VMware Volume Purchasing Programme (VPP), VMware EPP enables customers globally to purchase software licenses in volume rapidly while benefiting from cost savings, ease-of-procurement and deployment flexibility. VMware EPP is available to customers through authorized VMware partners. Read further...

Several of Brocade's Ethernet and storage area networking (SAN) fabric switches have been integrated by Hitachi Data Systems for networking technology in the new Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) converged infrastructure solutions. Brocade is delivering both top-of-rack switches as well as embedded server switches based on Fibre Channel and Ethernet technologies, reinforcing the company's leadership in its ability to offer comprehensive data centre networking solutions for critical IT and service provider environments. Read further...

Bull has made available EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure solutions based on Bull's bullion servers that provide validated solutions for virtual server environments - suitable for both business-critical application environments and for building private Clouds - and will significantly increase the number of VMs supported by current VSPEX configurations. Read further...

The hunt for the Higgs boson was undoubtedly the Grid computing story of 2012. Help now find the next big thing for 2013 and win 500 euro worth of dream gadgets. The European Grid Infrastructure is announcing the EGI Writing Prize 2013 in association with iSGTW. Read further...

This month marks the 10th anniversary for the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). Created in 2002 by EU Member States and the European Commission to develop the scientific integration of Europe, and to strengthen its international outreach, ESFRI has become an increasingly important forum to advise ministries and funding agencies. Some associated countries - Albania, Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey - also participate in ESFRI. Research Ministers had an informal discussion of ESFRI during the Competitiveness Council in Luxembourg. Read further...

In the far future, superconducting quantum bits might serve as components of high-performance computers. Today already do they help better understand the structure of solids, as is reported by researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in theSciencemagazine. By means of Josephson junctions, they measured the oscillations of individual atoms "tunneling" between two positions. This means that the atoms oscillated quantum mechanically. Deformation of the specimen even changed the frequency (DOI: 10.1126/science.1226487). Read further...

Whether it's a wedding, birthday party or other celebration, these days the chances are you'll have your camcorder with you to record the great occasion. But we often forget to bring the data cable along with us, so despite promising the hosts to transfer the images to their computer the morning after, we hardly ever do. "No problem", we say, "I'll burn you a CD when I get home". It would be so much easier, though, to transfer the data wirelessly. Read further...

Dell has launched initiatives with Clemson University, Indiana University and Arizona State University to provide community research computing solutions and services that will help solve some of the world's toughest issues. Through big data research analytics, storage services, open source frameworks for research and new large-data management, archiving and digital curation services, Dell will help universities best support groundbreaking research. Dell plans to support the universities' efforts through the power of Internet2. Read further...

IBM is streamlining the IT infrastructure and processes of Agriauto Industries Limited, one of the major auto parts manufacturers in Pakistan. The moves will help Agriauto improve operational processes throughout the company as well as increase uptime as it extends its footprint across the country. Read further...

To help global organisations make sense of the massive influx of data being created daily, IBM has expanded its PureSystems family of expert integrated systems with the introduction of PureData System. Now, clients can more efficiently manage and quickly analyze petabytes of data in minutes and intelligently use those insights to support specific business goals across their organisation including marketing, sales and business operations. Read further...

Indiana University plans to replace its largest supercomputer system, Big Red, with the fastest university-owned supercomputer in the nation. Named Big Red II, the next-generation Cray XK supercomputer will be capable on Peta/flop/s. Read further...

The scope and depth of research at the University of Wyoming will reach unprecedented levels with the opening of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC). Read further...

A celebration is scheduled Monday, October 15. That's when the long-anticipated NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center is unveiled during a ceremonial opening dedication in the North Range Business Park in Cheyenne. Read further...

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, will house the data repository for a new project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) aimed at accelerating the study of metabolomics, an emerging field of biomedical research that studies chemical processes that could help more clearly define the mechanisms underlying diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, and develop new strategies for treatment. Read further...

If quantum computers are ever going to perform all those expected feats of code-breaking and number crunching, then their component qubits - tiny ephemeral quantum cells held in a superposition of internal states - will have to be protected from intervention by the outside world. In other words, decoherence, the loss of the qubits' quantum integrity, has to be postponed. Now theoretical physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the University of Maryland have done an important step forward to understand qubits in a real-world setup. In a new study they show, for the first time, that qubits can successfully exist in a so called topological superconductor material even in the presence of impurities in the material and strong interactions among participating electrons. To see how qubits can enter into their special coherence-protection programme, courtesy of "Majorana particles", an exotic form of excitation, some groundwork has to be laid. Read further...

Mellanox has introduced SwitchX-2, the next generation of its switch silicon optimized for Software Defined Networking (SDN). SwitchX-2 includes advanced capabilities of remote configurable routing tables, lossless and congestion free networks, efficient control planes, and SDN-optimized software interfaces. Read further...